


the devil you know

by ictus



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Identity Issues, M/M, Manipulation, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-05 00:21:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20479889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ictus/pseuds/ictus
Summary: Harvey doesn’t know which he finds more daunting: the act of asking for the truth, or that he might actually get it.





	the devil you know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [summerdayghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/gifts).
  * Inspired by [behind a desk (either side of a table)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18796411) by [summerdayghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/pseuds/summerdayghost). 

> Role reversal remix of summerdayghost's _behind a desk (either side of a table)_. Thank you to crooked_arrow and asuralucier for the beta!

Harvey can never manage to shake the feeling of _right person, wrong place _every time he visits Bruce at Blackgate.

For most people, visitation means a terse conversation through a perspex sheet with only a phone line to connect them. But Harvey’s Gotham’s DA, their golden boy; if anyone’s able to pull a few strings, it’s him.

It’s that kind of pull that lands him on the right side of a two-way mirror. Harvey watches Bruce through the glass, fighting the all too familiar cognitive dissonance that comes with seeing Bruce locked up in here. It’s all wrong: the standard-issue jumpsuit with his prisoner number stamped across the chest, the handcuffs that keep him shackled to the table. Even the lighting is wrong—fluorescent and artificial where it flickers overhead, and the only ambient sound is the inescapable _tick_ of the plastic clock mounted on the wall. It’s a far cry from the sort of setting Harvey typically associates with Bruce, and the incongruency throws his thoughts into a tailspin. 

What’s most disconcerting is that looking at Bruce, it seems as though nothing has changed. He looks calm, composed—every bit the billionaire philanthropist that the tabloids had heralded him to be. The orange jumpsuit might as well be a three-piece Armani for the way that he wears it, his posture perfect and his head held high. He rises smoothly when Harvey enters, as if Harvey’s just joined him for dinner at one of Bruce’s preferred upscale restaurants. It’s another jarring contrast, one that comes with the reminder that he’ll never see Bruce outside these walls again.

“Harvey,” Bruce says with an incline of his head.

Harvey’s well-trained in maintaining his composure—a necessity in his line of work—so he doesn’t gasp when he sees Bruce’s face. But it’s a near thing. The right side is as handsome as ever; high cheekbones and a strong jaw, and a lush mouth that Harvey remembers all too well. But the left side, the side that was hidden from view, is marred with bruises; black and purple contusions that spill out under his skin, mottled and ugly and going yellow around the edges. Bruce’s left eye is a mess of broken capillaries, the surrounding skin looking tender and swollen.

Harvey swallows around the lump in his throat. “Bruce,” he finally manages.

“It’s good to see you, Harvey.” His voice carries that patented Wayne cadence; polite, but vacuous. Harvey can only nod in return. Bruce waits for Harvey to sit before sinking gracefully into his own chair, and if it weren’t for the rattle of the chains, Harvey would have forgotten he was wearing them.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Bruce asks. His tone is light, as if Harvey’s a business associate who’s dropped by without an appointment.

Right. So that’s how they’re going to play it.

“I came to see how you were,” Harvey says, because if Bruce isn’t going to give an inch, Harvey certainly won’t be the first to cave.

“Well the food could be better,” Bruce says blandly. “How’s the campaign?” he asks, and Harvey balks because it feels like a trap, one he can’t evade. This term’s campaign had been an uphill struggle right from the start. From the moment the preliminaries came in, Harvey knew he had no chance of winning unless he was able to deliver on a big, well-publicised case. Which he did.

“It went well,” Harvey says carefully. “I was re-elected.”

“So I heard. Congratulations, that must be quite a boost to your career.” Bruce’s tone is sincere but there’s something vicious in his eyes that gets Harvey right between the ribs. Mixed messages and misdirection are Bruce’s speciality; Harvey should have anticipated this, especially after the last few months, yet somehow he finds himself on the defensive.

“Then why did you ask?” It comes out as more accusatory than he would have liked, and Bruce’s vacant smile only aggravates him further.

“I’m sorry?”

Harvey takes a breath, forcing calm into his voice. “Why did you ask if you already knew?”

Bruce adopts an expression of mild confusion. “Guess it must have just slipped my mind,” he says absently, and Harvey can only grit his teeth against that familiar flare of irritation, because he knows _this _Bruce all too well.

_“Sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Bruce Wayne,” he says extending a hand. Harvey eyes the outstretched hand for a moment. _

_“Harvey Dent,” he replies as he shakes Wayne’s hand, forcing a smile onto his own face. It’s completely performative of course; the idea of Bruce Wayne needing any sort of introduction is ridiculous._

_“Oh,” Wayne says mildly. “Then I suppose you’re the reason for this whole”—he gestures vaguely around the ballroom—“soirée?” _

_Harvey follows Wayne’s gaze around the room. His eyes glance off the floor-to-ceiling campaign banners, all of which clearly depict his name, his face, and in some instances, his campaign promises. _

_Harvey lets go of Wayne’s hand with some reluctance. “Yes, I suppose I am,” he says, and smiles until his teeth hurt._

“Are you going to tell me what happened to your face?”

Bruce doesn’t shift and he doesn’t tense, all of his tells kept carefully in check. “What do you think happened?” Bruce counters easily.

Harvey feels the last of his patience slip through his fingers. “I don’t know, Bruce. It looks like someone, or _several_ people attacked you. Which seems a little bit hard to believe.”

Bruce quirks an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Bruce,” Harvey says, pinching his brow. “I’ve seen you take out half a dozen men in less than thirty seconds, I’ve seen you—”

“You’ve seen _me_, specifically?”

Harvey huffs out a breath, disbelieving. “Cut the crap, Bruce. I’m not here to play games.”

The more Harvey looks, the less it adds up. Bruce can more than hold his own against most of the crooks in here, and then some. But his hands are unmarked and as perfect as ever—

_(hands tugging at Harvey’s tie, slipping under his shirt)_

—and they bear no defensive wounds. His lip is split, still swollen despite the injury being days old—

_(lips at Harvey’s neck, sucking a bruise into the hollow of his throat)_

—but Bruce knows how to roll with the punches, and Harvey has never seen that kind of mark on him in all the time Harvey’s known him. If Bruce came away from the fight looking like this, it’s because he’s _allowed _it to happen.

“Well?” Harvey prompts.

Bruce shrugs, a premeditated mannerism plucked from a familiar oeuvre of false tells. Bruce is nothing more than deflection and misdirection all the way down to his dishonest core, and it all seems so blatant now that Harvey knows what he’s looking for. “Some of the criminals here weren’t too pleased to see me.”

“The other criminals, you mean.”

Bruce’s smile curls into something ugly. Finally, they’re getting somewhere. “Right Harvey,” he says with no small degree of derision, “the _other_ criminals.”

“And security failed to intervene?”

Bruce shrugs again. “Too little, too late. Inadequate security at Blackgate Penitentiary? Quick, alert the _Gazette, _I’m sure they’ll do a feature. These are your tax dollars hard at work,” he says, running his tongue over his split lip. “Maybe it’s something you can address in your next campaign.”

Bruce’s gaze is more of a leer; challenging him, goading him—but Harvey refuses to rise to the taunt. He changes tack. “It’s strange how you talk about the other inmates as if you yourself are not also a felon.”

Bruce’s eyes darken, true irritation passing his face for the first time. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t use your courtroom voice on me,” Bruce says, and in that moment there’s enough disgust in his tone to suggest that Harvey has finally tapped into something _real_.

_“So there is something real under that carefully-cultivated façade.”_

_Bruce’s grin is all Wayne, his expression politely vacant. “Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean?”_

_Harvey bursts out laughing, taken aback by Bruce’s perfect parody of himself. When Bruce had proposed after-work drinks, Harvey had braced himself for several hours of mindless chitchat about golf or polo, or whatever it is that people like Bruce Wayne like to talk about. Instead, Bruce had proven himself to be well-versed in everything from politics to linguistics, from economics to art. He had a sharp wit and a sharper tongue, and Harvey was beginning to concede that there was more to Bruce Wayne than meets the eye._

_Bruce steps into Harvey’s personal space. “What would you say to an actual date? We could go out to a restaurant, or order in at the Penthouse. You could get to know all of my… hidden depths.”_

_Harvey snorts, his cheeks colouring with the insinuation. The scotch they drank has made him feel like liquid on the inside, and for a moment he entertains the fantasy of leaning in and tasting the liquor right off Bruce’s lips. Instead, he says, “I don’t know if I’m comfortable being complicit in this double life you’re leading.”_

_“Well then,” Bruce says, sinking gracefully to his knees. “I suppose I’m just going to have to convince you.”_

“Bruce, you have a rap sheet longer than my arm. Do I need to remind you of your charges? Over fifty counts of assault, including assaulting an officer of the law, _including_ involuntary manslaughter.” Bruce keeps his face blank and his hands relaxed, but the tic at his jaw gives him away. Harvey pushes further. “That’s not even counting breaking and entering, aiding and abetting, obstruction of justice, property damage, _vigilantism_—”

“Why did you come here, Harvey?” Bruce interrupts suddenly. “Was it to gloat?”

Harvey falters. This is it, now or never. Now’s the time to push, to see just how much honesty Bruce is willing to concede.

_“What’s this?” Bruce asks, breathless._

_Harvey makes a questioning noise against Bruce’s neck, too intent on working on his belt to pay his question any mind. _

_“What’s what?” he asks belatedly. By the time he looks up, it’s to see that Bruce has got a hold of one of the many court orders that litter Harvey’s desk. _

_“I thought the Maroni case got thrown out,” Bruce says, his last word cut off by a gasp as Harvey gets a hand around him, slick precome smoothing the way._

_“It did,” Harvey murmurs as he pushes Bruce down onto his desk, nudging his legs apart. “But there was new evidence.” Evidence from Gordon’s department by way of an anonymous tip. You didn’t have to be the world’s greatest detective to know what that meant._

_Bruce opens his mouth to reply, but whatever else he might have said is lost to the strangled moan that’s torn from his throat as Harvey presses into him, inch by inch. Harvey fucks Bruce hard and fast, the way they both love it, with Bruce leaving scratches on the mahogany surface and arching his back to meet Harvey’s thrusts, begging for more. Harvey doesn’t let up until he’s spilling deep inside him, and when he does, the Maroni case is the furthest thing from his mind._

An unnatural stillness has fallen over the interrogation room, and for a moment Harvey can convince himself that all of their masks have fallen away, that it really is just the two of them. It makes what he has to say so much harder. He doesn’t know which he finds more daunting: the act of asking for the truth, or the fact that he might actually get it.

For long moments, it’s just the tick of the clock in the silent room. Until—

“Were you using me, Bruce?”

The question comes out quieter than he expected. Bruce doesn’t answer, the seconds stretching endlessly, but it doesn’t matter; Harvey’s used to reading into Bruce’s silences.

“You were, weren’t you?” Harvey asks, not quite managing to keep is voice even. “You were using me to get inside information on the DA’s office. It’s wasn’t enough that you had Gordon in your back pocket, to know that you had the GCPD at your disposal. You wanted more,” Harvey finishes with disgust. Bruce’s face is perfectly expressionless, but Harvey’s not done, not by a long shot. “That’s what you do. Isn’t it, Bruce? You use people like pawns in this game you’re playing, like—like soldiers in this _crusade_—”

“I don’t do that,” Bruce says quietly.

“Don’t you? And what would Jason Todd say about that?”

Bruce pales. “Don’t,” he whispers.

“You know, I read Jason’s file,” Harvey says. He’s struck by the urge to rise and pace in front of Bruce the way he does when cross-examining a witness. But this is nothing like court. “Smart kid, straight-A student. He was what, thirteen when you took him in?”

Bruce has gone very still. There’s no measured indifference, no careless shrug. His mouth has thinned into a harsh line and his knuckles have gone white where they’re gripping the table. This is all Bruce, no charades, no deception.

Harvey presses on. “See, the official reports say that he died in a terrorist bombing. Just a poor kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you and I both know how easy those reports are to fake.”

Bruce’s fists are clenched, as if he’s gearing up to strike and it’s only the cuffs that are stopping him. But when he speaks, it’s in a voice of determined calm.

“Jason’s death was—”

“Your fault,” Harvey finishes.

“Yes,” says Bruce sharply. “And I will have to live with that knowledge every day for the rest of my life.”

Harvey sucks in a breath. Bruce is being honest—agonisingly so—for perhaps the first time since they met. When your relationship is built on lies, it’s impossible to discern a baseline, but Harvey thinks this might be it. Harvey hesitates, deliberating on whether or not he should twist the knife. His hands feel empty and restless, and he itches for something to hold between his fingers, like a pen or a cigarette or—or a coin.

Two options: fifty fifty.

Harvey hesitates and hesitates and errs on the side of _twist_.

“Is it enough?” he asks softly.

Bruce’s face twists into an ugly grimace. It’s the kind of anger Harvey’s only ever seen from behind a cowl, the kind that Bruce has spent his life channelling into violence.

“Get out,” Bruce mutters through clenched teeth, but Harvey’s not done, not yet.

“Did Jason know what he was signing up for when you took him in?”

“I’m telling you to leave,” Bruce spits.

_To twist or not to twist?_

“Was he a good soldier?”

Bruce doesn’t wait, doesn’t project his intentions at all. Harvey blinks and when he opens his eyes Bruce’s hands are on him, grabbing him by the lapels and dragging him over the table. Bruce is rabid with anger, making the injured side of his face appear grotesque, and the last hysterical thought that crosses Harvey’s mind before Bruce hits him is _when did he slip his cuffs?_ The thought evaporates as Harvey’s world tilts on its axis, drowned out by the deafening _crack_ of his skull meeting the hard concrete floor. Distantly, Harvey becomes aware of screaming—the guards have re-entered the room—but it’s lost to the ringing in Harvey’s ears, to the buzzing that fills his head and silences everything else.

Harvey lets his eyes fall closed, trying to correct his blurred vision, and when he blinks the world back into focus Bruce is being forced over the table by two security guards, his arms cruelly wrenched behind his back as they’re resecured. Somebody’s laughing, high and maniacal, and it takes Harvey a few seconds to realise the sound is coming from his own mouth.

“You know at first”—Harvey gasps—“at first I didn’t believe it, I _couldn’t_ believe it. Bruce Wayne: the Batman.” He staggers to his feet slowly, touching his mouth and feeling for damage. When he licks his lips he tastes blood. “But now,” he says, straightening his jacket. “Now you’ve erased all doubt.”

Harvey takes a steadying breath before addressing to the guards. “We’re done here,” he says, and turns his gaze back to Bruce. The look on his face tells him that Bruce understands, wholly and completely, that those words are meant from him too.

_After the sentence is read, Harvey is the first prosecutor to rise to his feet. The courtroom is full of commotion as everyone files out at once, flashes as the press try to get their last snap. Harvey doesn’t realise he’s crossed the room until he finds himself faced with the back of Bruce’s head._

_“Bruce.”_

_Bruce turns slowly, his face impassive. Harvey meets his gaze and tries not to flinch._

_“I took a vow to protect this city,” Harvey says. And because it sounds like an apology, he adds, “I did what I did and I’d do it again.”_

_Bruce’s eyes are as cold as Harvey’s ever seen them, but the rest of his face is utterly expressionless. Harvey’s heart is caught in his throat, helplessly watching on as two officers approach Bruce from the wings and flank his sides. _

_“So did I,” Bruce says, and allows himself to be escorted away._

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/scansionictus).


End file.
